After facing a relocation of its home court, girls tennis started off the season with a 2-5 record. The team is looking forward to having “a winning season,” girls tennis coach Macarthur Deshazer said. According to team captain and junior Mili Mittal, the team welcomed a large number of freshmen this year to the program. “It’s a young team and so the fact that we’re not losing everything really badly is actually really good,” captain and junior Patricia Garvey said. Mittal hopes this will indicate that the team “will be a really good team in years to come.” With new players “you just get to meet new people and get new, different skills added on to the team,” junior Heather Hopwood said. Hopwood also stated that, with the addition of new players, “you know [they] can get kind of nervous, and we just try to make them feel more comfortable.” Last year, the team was fourth in the district. Mittal hopes that the team “can keep up that record.” “I think we’re going to get better as the year goes on,” freshman Sarah Nicholson said. Senior Katie MacDowell admitted that the team was not “doing as well as we’d like to be doing,” but hoped that the team would “do okay” in the season. Hopwood agreed, stating that girls tennis “is improving as the season goes on.” Additionally, the younger players are “all little … balls of energy,” Garvey said. Garvey is optimistic that the younger players will become one of the top six seeds in future years. The experience level of returning players “kind of forces [younger players] to step up their game a little bit,” Deshazer said. “To me it’s more just the playing with the top six girls helped me the most, so maybe that will help them,” MacDowell said. The top six rely also on the lower-seeded players “for support and just to cheer us on,” Mittal said.
2011-06-09